Sheikh Abdullah al Harari, who has died aged 98, was the founder of the Lebanese fundamentalist Sunni Muslim group Habashi. Harari, also known as al Habashi, kept a low profile in Lebanon's internal politics.

He was born in Ethiopia in 1910, and received religious training from a number of clerics there as well as in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. He came to Lebanon in the early 1950s and wrote several books on Islam. The Habashi group, which he founded in the 1970s, stayed out of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, which killed more than 150,000 people.

Unlike other Lebanese groups, the Habashis never ran a militia. The group was founded mainly to gain ground among Sunnis, offering financial aid and social services to the needy.

The group supported Yasser Arafat's PLO in the 1970s and later shifted allegiance to Syria in the early 1990s, but never grew into an influential political force in Lebanon. It backed the Shiite Hezbollah-led opposition during the power struggle with the western-backed parliament majority last spring.

The group's previous leader, Sheikh Nizar Halabi, was assassinated by gunmen outside his Beirut home in 1995. Halabi was reportedly vying to become the spiritual leader of Lebanon's Sunni community. Three Muslim extremists - a Palestinian and two Lebanese - were convicted of the assassination.

The group's statement did not mention a surviving wife or children.